I have long been a noisy advocate of the prudence of seriously working through ‘what if’ scenarios. I have to say, being a noisy advocate doesn’t actually mean that anyone will listen. That’s because humans are pretty much allergic to change and because they are allergic to change, they are equally reluctant to contemplate any events (no matter how plausible) that are likely to create the need for change. It sometimes takes the unthinkable to happen to portray this reticence as sheer insanity. Many years ago now when I started working with my business associate Matt Leary, I was sitting in one of his sales training sessions and he said this, ‘If you can anticipate it, you can prepare for it’. I never forgot those words - how true they ring today.
Fast forward to where we find ourselves today - in the middle of a global pandemic which has literally imposed an entirely ‘new normal’. Everything is different. Offices shut. Planes grounded. Home-working - mandatory. Schools closed. Economy - mothballed. Face-to-face meetings? Forget it…
It would be a pretty reasonable response from anyone who said, ‘even if we did scenario planning there’s no way we could have imagined the coronavirus’. Sure, it’s a fair point. A global pandemic of this proportion seemed an unlikely prospect in January. Now, it’s happening…and we need to cope. More than cope though we need to adapt and we need to adapt fast. Right now the essence of business success is simply ‘staying in business’.
The harsh reality is that this is also a time in which future battles will be won and lost. Those that adapt fastest to these new conditions are almost certainly those who realise that now is a good time to steal a march on competition. So, now is the time to stop and assess what has changed, what is the impact and what new measures and procedures must be put in place to survive now and secure a fast exit out of the pits when danger has passed. This is why, if you missed your chance to scenario plan for a global pandemic knocking your business for six, you should urgently be planning for the next scenario. And what might this next scenario be I hear you ask?? Let me offer you a thought…
The coronavirus pandemic, as we have seen, forced the world to adopt new coping mechanisms, both in our lives at home and in the office. These new coping mechanisms have created new ways of working largely manifested as even greater reliance on the communications technology we use as part of our ‘interaction toolkit’. The extent of the Work From Home (WFH) mandate means that these new working practices will soon become embedded habits and this ‘new normal’ will quite soon become just ‘normal’. Profound danger awaits those who are waiting for everything to ‘return to normal’. Normal has gone and a new normal arrived and you can bet your bottom dollar that this new normal will, quite soon, just be the way you do things.
So, whatever you do over the next few weeks and months, make sure you take time to make scenario planning part of your normal business practice. It is much a much neglected discipline and it is hard and can be time consuming, but nothing can prepare you like anticipation. Think of it as an insurance policy - every month you begrudge the payment, but when you find that the improbable just happened, you’ll be jolly glad you were paying those premiums…